1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for searching actual data as a searching target using metadata related to the actual data, and in particular relates to a data searching system constituted of a data searching apparatus which searches metadata based on a search condition specified by the user and a data providing apparatus which searches actual data and metadata according to a searching request generated based on the metadata searched by the data searching apparatus and provides a search result to the data searching apparatus, a method of synchronizing metadata and a data searching apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Metadata are data about actual data, an example of which is one described by defined items such as location, contents, keyword, language, and data format of the actual data.
Using metadata, it becomes possible to efficiently search target data from piles of vast amounts of data disclosed on web sites for example, and it is largely expected to be used for searching of data which are difficult to be searched by keywords, such as pictures in particular.
As a publicly known technology related to the data searching apparatus using metadata, there is Patent document 1 for example.
[Patent Document 1] JP-A 2002-202975